


her name a song

by Falalalafell



Series: sing it from the rooftops (her name, her deeds) [1]
Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Autistic Character, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Lalafell Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-06
Updated: 2020-05-06
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:46:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,107
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24032245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Falalalafell/pseuds/Falalalafell
Summary: The beginning, again and again.
Relationships: Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV) & Original Character(s)
Series: sing it from the rooftops (her name, her deeds) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1733617
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	her name a song

When she wakes, she is standing. 

It is cold, and snowing. The wind makes ice fall in delicate circling patterns, and she watches, fascinated, until light catches her attention instead. Reds and greens and yellow-whites hang from every surface, atop every tree. Under the largest of them, people sing. 

“Falalalala,” she echoes, and wanders on. 

She is cold, but not frozen. She hungers, but does not starve. She cannot remember her name, and neither, does it seem, is it known by anyone else. 

Everyone sings, and she sings with them. 

The water does not taste good, but the snow is fine. 

There is someone watching her. 

Many people watch her. With joy, as she sings. With fondness, as she plays in the snow. With laughter, as she watches things and others with wide eyes. Confusion, pity, concern, sometimes. Smiling. 

But there is someone watching her, and he is not smiling. 

He watches her until the bell rings once, twice, three times, as she wanders and wonders and sings. She is not afraid. 

On the fourth bell, he approaches her. 

He does not speak, even then; just continues watching with those sharp, sharp silver eyes. Unlike everyone else she has seen, his ears are fuzzy and on the top of his head. A tail swings behind him, steady as a metronome. 

She is fascinated. 

He picks her up.

Still, she is not afraid. 

They go to the edge where the water tastes bad, where people to-and-fro carrying boxes and barrels onto boats and back. She sees more people like him, the ears and the tail, gathered around one of the smaller ships. 

“Tohrscha, I found a child!” He calls out, tone at odds with his expression. 

One looks over, mouth open, eyes wide. “Leqa, no, that’s a Lalafell!”

They bring her into the ship, and it is warmer. 

“But she’s so small,” this Leqa says, hovering as the one he named Tohrscha looks her over, and a third runs between rooms and plies her with blankets. 

“Just because someone is small doesn’t always mean they’re a child, Leqa.” Tohrscha replies, sounding patient. “Most Lalafell are no greater than three fulms in height. I’m sorry, miss, my brother didn’t mean anything by it - gods, you’re FREEZING-“

“But she’s _SMALL,_ ” Leqa says again.

That gives her pause. “Do you mean she is small for a Lalafell?” She asks, slowly. 

“She’s small,” he repeats, emphatically nodding. 

“...Okay,” Tohrscha says after a brief pause. “Miss, how old are you, exactly?”

She doesn’t know. Is she an adult? Is she a child? She feels like she simply IS. 

She tilts her head back and forth, and hopes that’s an answer. 

“Okay,” Tohrscha mutters. “Okay.”

There is loudness, outside. She does not like it. 

“You left who might be a child out on the street for _weeks?!_ ” Tohrscha yells, at someone. She doesn’t know who. Whoever it is blubbers back, but the answer is indistinct through the wood and Tohrscha’s continued scolding. 

Leqa looks uncomfortable too. He’s holding her again, close to his chest like she is a favored plush toy. It’s nice, she thinks. She feels warm. She feels loved. 

“It’s Starlight!” Tohrscha screams, reaching new pitch. _“Starlight!”_

The arms around her grow tighter, and Leqa starts to hum. She sings with him.

“The orphanage says they’ll take her in properly, but...”

“But they’re a load of shite-eating blighters?” Suggests the tallest with odd eyes. The green one glitters like a jewel. 

Tohrscha sighs. “To sum it up. Maarhen and I went, but Azeyma’s shining arse, it’s a pit.”

It’s all she catches before her attention is drawn away by a waving hand. “Hey now, don’t worry about them, darling. They’re just talking boring stuff. I’m nicer to look at anyway.”

It is Yon who speaks to her, the man who is not Leqa. Leqa himself sits by her side, unabashedly staring at the ones talking about her and not being guided away. She thinks it is unfair.

“Now I know I asked this already but I must be absolutely sure. Do you remember who you are?”

She shakes her head. 

“Do you remember where you’re from?”

She shakes her head again. 

“Do you remember who your family is?”

She shakes her head once more. It hurts a little. 

Yon sighs and looks up to the ceiling. She follows his gaze, but there’s nothing there. “Okay. And you can’t talk or read either.”

They had tried, earlier, to see if she would speak up for herself. She could not. Any attempt at words more distinct than the simplest syllable came out meshed and wrong. Lines on paper meant nothing to her. But she could sing, and found that enough for her. 

Yon does not find it quite so satisfactory. He mutters something, but she can only hear the vague shape of the words as Leqa pulls her into his lap. 

“Don’t worry,” he says to her hair, “Tohrscha is smart. She’ll fix everything.”

She believes him.

“Will you stay with us?”

It’s Tohrscha who asks her this, having pulled her aside while the others are all occupied. The silver gaze is steady and kind, but she cannot meet it.

“You don’t have to.” Tohrscha continues. “You can stay here in town if you wish. Or if you have somewhere you’d rather go, we can take you, or find someone else who can take you. And it’d need not be forever, of course. If your memories return, or if you find somewhere you want to live, we would not keep you. We would let you leave, gladly. Just so you know that you have many options.”

“But Leqa likes you, and none of us in good conscience can leave you like this. So, until that day comes...will you stay with us?”

Tohrscha’s eyes are so sincere it hurts, and yet she’s never felt safer.

She nods.

“She’s going to need a name.”

It’s Veyya who says this, with the soft face and soft voice. The others pause in their celebrations to ponder this. As one, they turn to look at her.

She sings.

They share a look.

They know enough about Lalafellin names to know that Falala Fala is a proper one. They don’t know quite enough to realize it doesn’t match her eyes, but Falala is happier with the sound of it this way.

Falala Fala learns. 

For each thing she does know, there are two she doesn’t. She knows of boats, but not of docks or the sea. She knows of people, but not Miqo’te or Lalafell. She knows of love, but does not know of herself or her new family. 

So she learns. 

“We were Miqo’te of the L tribe,” Tohrscha explains to her one night. “We still are, in our hearts, and so we call ourselves thus. But when a Tia came and challenged the old Nunh, our father, he killed him to claim his title. A cruelty, but his right. Yet he would abuse his new privilege by killing all boy children of the previous Nunh, forcing all to flee or die. And so we took Leqa and ran to Yon, who had long since left the tribe and bought a boat, and we have been traveling and trading ever since.”

The boards of the ship groan as if they mourn with her. Ijelha is above them, steering by starlight, but the rest are lured to sleep by the dark. Falala watches them now, drawing breaths, unguarded, and does not understand. 

“His name was Ala, our father.” Tohrscha continues, as if the shadows pull it from her. “We all have his eyes, or one, in Utreysh’s case. He was a silly and happy man, and we loved him dearly. I wish he was still with us.”

Tohrscha has taught her enough of writing to know her name - how the hook of the F bends, the curves and the straight lines of A, that L is not quite so proud as I. Yet her most important lessons are implicit; names have power. So Falala changes hers own to match her siblings, and holds the parchment up as triumph. 

“Perfect,” Tohrscha says, looking sad but laughing. “That’s perfect.”

(And if Falala L’ala promises that she will one day defeat the Nunh to return to her family their home, she doesn’t have the words to say it.)

Falala L’ala learns. 

From Tohrscha she learns not only of her family but of mathematics, geography, history, science, all amongst the reading and writing. Her fingers are ever ink-stained as Tohrscha guides her hand, clumsily mapping all the parts of the world. 

Utreysh teaches her how her body is a weapon, and how weapons are simply a part of her body. Amid concerned and disapproving stares Falala is taught how to lift an axe so that she may split a skull in twain; how to hold a fist so the bones she breaks are not her own. 

Maarhen is who shows her how to have fun. Together they reel up fish for supper, climb the wind-strained nets to the crow’s nest, race through the shallows and the depths. Her lessons are subtle; to swim, to climb, to hunt. All are masked as games, but Falala would not begrudge her this deception even if she knew it. 

Veyya guides her through the simpler necessities; cooking, cleaning, sewing, even weapon maintenance. The general upkeep of life and livelihood. Things that are often overlooked, yet invaluable all the same. That in itself is a lesson too. 

Ijelha points out the stars. She speaks of their meaning, their stories, how they guide her in the night like a lighthouse through a storm, in a whisper bordering on reverence. She teaches Falala of the ship as well, how to maneuver it, how to care for it, of starboard and larboard, though she is forever mixing up the two. 

Yon takes her under his wing in the art of people. He points out the subtleties of distant expressions, explains to her what they mean. Explains how to double layer words until the meaning is lost but the sincerity remains, and how to spot a lie that she may never be taken advantage of. Yet it is his own laughing mask that Falala learns from most of all.

Leqa gives her secret things, things the others try to know but cannot. He teaches her how the water is loud but also quiet. How safe she is in small and dark spaces. How to touch things that make her hands scream. Where to hide when everything is too much. How to be heard when no one can really understand. Much and more on how to be herself when the world wants her to be someone, anyone else. 

She excels with Utreysh, Maarhen and Leqa; with all others, her mind is like a sieve. Falala learns, above all, that her hands are not made for gentle work. 

It begins and ends on a winter’s day. 

The wind bites fiercely as ever, but the years have given Falala tolerance and wisdom enough to wear layers. She is swinging between the hanging ropes, making a jungle out of nests and masts, wishing it were warmer so she could dive into the ocean without consequence. 

Her brother is watching from the crow’s nest. “You are a little bird,” Leqa says, laughing. 

“I’d think her more an opo-opo, what with those big eyes and how fast she climbs,” Maarhen chimes in from down below them. 

“No,” Leqa disagrees, “she is a bird. A little, little bird.”

“Well cats and birds need to eat. Breakfast is ready.”

Falala nods and jumps from up high into Maarhen’s arms, who catches her, like always. She carries her below deck, leaving behind Leqa, who always follows in his own time. 

The smell of spiced fruit and bread flood her mouth with saliva. Their travels this time only take them a short ways up the coast, so they are able to indulge in fresh foods, things that would not normally keep for weeks at sea. Falala wiggles out of Maarhen’s hold, who places her down obediently, and dashes to vault atop the counter. 

Veyya just smiles at her, like she always does, and offers her a slice of pineapple. “Help me set the table?”

It’s a silly bribe. Falala would have helped out anyway. 

She eats the pineapple from her sister’s fingers, who laughs, and hops down to start searching for where Maarhen hid the plates away this time. In the background Falala hears Tohrscha gently coaxing Ijelha into eating before she sleeps, and Utreysh not-so-gently doing the same to Yon. 

Leqa comes down the stairs. “There’s a ship.”

“A ship?” Maarhen parrots curiously as everyone else goes very very quiet and very very still. “Where from? What does it look like?”

“Look like?” Leqa parrots, not smiling, “A ship.”

“Yes but what _kind_ of ship? Is it one of those new pleasure cruises? The joint Ul’dahn and Thavnairian ones? Honestly, people and what they’ll do when the world’s torn apart and wartorn, it makes me si-”

He hisses and flails one hand. He’s impatient, or they have no time. 

“Show me.” Yon stands up quickly enough that his chair falls backwards with an ugly clatter. 

Leqa runs outside, and Yon follows. 

“I’m getting my axe.” Utreysh growls, stalking off towards the bedroom.

“It has a striped bowsprit,” Yon announces when he returns, and that must mean something because the air gets heavy. “We’re close enough to land we could probably make it before them.”

“Close enough to land but not close enough to people.” With a sigh, Tohrscha stands up and stretches. “Even if we find somewhere safe to undock there’s no telling if they have others lying in wait, and we won’t know the surroundings. Best to meet them on our ship where we know best.”

“The cargo?” Leqa asks, following their brother down. 

“There’s only two ways under. So long as we keep both of them blocked, it’ll be safe.”

“And what about...?” Veyya doesn’t finish. Falala is unsure why she’s staring at her. 

Utreysh returns with heavy footsteps, axe over her shoulder like it’s meant to be there. She is resolute. “So long as we keep both of them blocked, it’ll be safe.”

Everyone is moving but Falala and Leqa. 

An electric weight is settling over her layer by layer, making motion a cruel necessity. But Leqa is holding her as though he is afraid she might vanish in his arms, and so she remains static. 

“Some bad people are going to try and steal from us,” Veyya had explained, petting Falala’s head as softly as she spoke, “and we’re not going to let them. It might come to fighting-“

“We’re going to kill them.”

“Utie!” Veyya spun around, tail fluffy with agitation. “You can’t just say that!”

“Why? She’ll be here. It’s not like she won’t know.” Utreysh crouches down to meet Falala’s eyes head on. When Falala tries to look away, she grabs her chin. “The people on that other ship are pirates. They’re going to try and kill us and take our cargo because they don’t care about the people who need them or about us. We’re going to fight back and kill them first. You’re going to hide with Leqa below deck and if any of them get near you-“

“That’s enough!” Veyya snapped, grabbing at her sister’s hand. Falala looked away, finally free of the _pullingcrushingstretchingbreaking-_ “You know she doesn’t like that! Falala, sweetheart, you don’t have to worry. We won’t let anyone get to you. If something does happen Leqa will be there to protect you, okay? There’s nothing to worry about.”

Utreysh started words, but Leqa picked her up in the moment and that was that. 

She wants to help. Falala wants to help, burns with it, but right now the best way to help is to do nothing at all. So she sings to Leqa, hums and coos whenever someone comes to check on them, and accepts the love that comes from being someone others need to protect. If it makes them feel safer, feel stronger, it will have to be enough. 

“Five minutes!” Yon calls from above. 

Everyone heads upstairs except Leqa, who retreats to the cargo hold, and Falala, carried along with him. He makes next to no effort in hiding them, but there’s really nothing to hide behind; everything they’re ferrying is small, fragile, and supposedly immensely valuable. That means all of it warrants being individually boxed up and tied down. Even if the two of them could move the cargo around, having it all stacked up in one corner would be nearly as suspicious as being out in the open as they are. 

Leqa has most of his back to the wall but is a little curved so neither of them can see the door straight on. Falala knows it makes him more secure that way. It makes her feel more secure too. But as the minutes drag on, seeming so much longer than five, she finds herself staring waiting for something, anything to happen. 

Anything comes in the form of fire. The _hisscrack_ of Yon charging up a spell and setting it free-

“It’s metal!”

And the world breaks.

It’s a sudden storm of sound, screams and snapping planks and footsteps footsteps too many footsteps and Leqa stumbles, spins and rolls across the floor, sideways forwards back until he stops with a jolt, unwittingly pinning Falala beneath him. She struggles out but he’s too heavy, and she can only manage halfway before she sees upside-down the metal spire breaking through their sanctuary, its retreat and arrival of a grinning face marking it their tomb. 

“Oh, lucky me,” the new face purrs, so quiet in the din yet the loudest thing heard. Leqa hoists himself upright and Falala scrambles to stand. She pats his shoulder _(forgiveness concern be ready)_ but the contact only makes him flinch, fumbling for one of his daggers as it scatters across the floor. 

“Poor kitten,” the stranger laughs, twirling her own knife and Falala feels her brother tense. 

And she lunges and Falala-

Moves-

Grasps the untested pommel-

Thrusts-

The stranger shrieks, more rage than pain-

Dodge and dash and there there _there-_

Wet heat and metal pour down her hands and splatter over her face. The woman’s knife goes _tink_ as it drops to the floor, and she follows it, graceless and screaming no longer. Falala gasps, heaving air, licks her lips and regrets it the second the coppery taste hits her tongue. Blood is gross. She spits. 

It’s tougher pulling the dagger out of the stranger’s neck than it was stabbing it in, somehow, but Falala manages. She’s not sure what to do with it afterwards. Falala turns, figuring she should give it back to Leqa since it is his, after all, but the look on his face stops her dead. 

She doesn’t see it well. He’s not looking at her, for one, but at the stranger - the pirate, she must have been a pirate, Falala realizes belatedly - at the pirate’s corpse. Falala is also not looking at Leqa; the second she did all she felt was _wrongwrongwrongwrongwrong_ , and the image is quickly being painted over in white. Was he angry? Was he scared? Was he crying? She already doesn’t remember and she’s too afraid to look again. 

Her eyes fall on the pirate’s orphaned weapon. It’s a pretty thing, for all that it kills. The blade shines and is newly sharpened over the scratches that mark its use, contrasting her brother’s, dull and untouched. 

She picks it up. It’s heavy in more ways than one. 

But it balances well in her palm and the size is small enough that she can grasp it with minimal issues. Falala knows what she can do with it. 

Leqa is breathing in stuttering gasps, swallowing tears and empty air. Falala’s arms tense with the urge to embrace him, even as she can’t look at him, but Falala can’t protect Leqa from himself any more than she can protect him from her. Yet if she is broken as his gentle shield, then she can, at least, be his loving weapon. 

She loves him. She loves him. She loves them all so much. It hurts to be the one to hurt them. 

Falala leaves her heart with her brother as she leaves through the hole from the bowsprit. 

She kills fourteen people with those mismatched daggers. 

It’s the easiest thing she’s ever done. 

No one comes out of the battle unscathed. 

Yon has a limp that she thinks might be permanent. Ijelha has broken her arm. Tohrscha is covered in bruises of every shade rainbow, and Veyya in scratches and burns. Maarhen won’t wake. Leqa won’t sleep. Utreysh’s only eye is green now.

No one comes out unscathed, but they all come out. That’s all Falala can ask for. 

They are talking again. 

They are talking about her. 

Talking, perhaps, is a gentler word. Hushed shouts, whispered arguments, heated discussions under breath - but all these words and theirs lead to the same conclusion. It’s about her. 

Falala knows it’s about her in all that she doesn’t know what it’s about. When she approaches, the conversations stop. Dire faces stretch into strained smiles. Questions are lovingly unanswered with vague misdirection and distraction. There’s a void between them growing and they think she doesn’t know it. 

Snippets and persistence reveal the littlest things; that her siblings are afraid and they disagree. That Utreysh opposes Yon and is strongly supported by Leqa. 

That it’s about what she did that winter day. 

She doesn’t get it. She did exactly what they did - _better_ than they did. Why is it only her who has amassed this scorn? How can she have done something wrong when she did the very same as they all did? Why are the rules different for her?

Why won’t they tell her what she did wrong?

The chance to learn what she did wrong ends with all the force and finality of a closed book. 

“This life isn’t good for you, Falala. We hadn’t considered how dangerous our way of living is when we asked you to join our family, physically or mentally. It’d be better for you to stay somewhere safer and more stable. I have some friends at the Arcanist’s Guild in Limsa Lominsa - they said they can take you in. I’ll also arrange for you to have an education there, and commission some adventurers to look for your real family. If they’re anywhere in the world, it’s bound to be Eorzea.”

Tohrscha says this to her as if it couldn’t break her own small world apart, and no amount of effort changes her mind. 

Everything is ending, and somehow, Falala knows it’s her fault. 

She spends a lot of time swimming. 

What’s a little cold?

What’s a little more saltwater?

They set her on a boat that is not home towards Limsa Lominsa. 

“If we take you ourselves, we’ll never let you go.” Ijelha explains, brushing her hair for what might be the last time. 

Falala would do anything for them not to let her go at all. 

With her hair brushed and in her nicest clothes, the little gifts she’s been given over the years all packed in a brand-new bag, Falala hears her goodbyes one by one. 

“We’ll write to you,” says L’tohrscha, “make sure you write back. Give the letters to Thubyrgeim. She’ll see them to us.”

L’utreysh has no words for her, but claps her on the shoulder and ruffles her hair roughly. 

L’yon wiggles his ears in the way he knows she likes. “It won’t be long. And next time we’ll see you with your real family.”

“Work hard, but don’t forget to play just as hard.” L’maarhen reminds her. 

“If you miss us, look at the stars. One day they’ll bring us back to you.” L’ijelha says. 

L’veyya is crying too hard for speech, but she fixes Falala’s hair and presses a kiss to her forehead. 

L’leqa, for the first time since that day, picks her up and hugs her. He whispers in her ear, “I love you. I gave you a surprise to make things better. Love you.”

She sings to him. 

He puts her down and steps away, away, away, and the crowd that has been forming around the ship’s entrance swarms and pulls her in like a riptide as the doors finally open. 

Her family is gone by the time she reaches the open sky. It is snowing. 

_Hear. Feel. Think._

She wakes.

**Author's Note:**

> Many thanks to the Warriors of Light who inspired this, such as Ikael Jelaar and W'rahela Uillces, as well as my many encouraging friends.


End file.
